Every few months it seems I read a post somewhere that proclaims that SEO is dead, or a sham, or useless. So it was gratifying to see that one of the organizations that does NOT buy into that assessment of Search Engine Optimization is Google themselves.
Some of what Google had to say about its own SEO is very important for small business owners. Here are the key points you can learn from this revealing Google post…
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
https://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/horizon-web-marketing.png00Ross Barefoothttps://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/horizon-web-marketing.pngRoss Barefoot2019-05-22 14:25:182019-05-22 14:51:00Google Does SEO, and They Claim it's Important to their Success
SEO stands for “Search Engine” Optimization. It’s Understandable People Get Confused.
Almost every day I delete an email from some “SEO” company, often written in broken English, telling me that they can guarantee a high ranking on Google. In the first place, such claims are always bogus (yes, I said “always” not “almost always”). In the second place, so what?
Ranking high is nice, it’s desirable, it stokes our egos, but ultimately, most business people realize that a high ranking, even a number ranking, can be completely meaningless. Of course once you think only in terms of “Search Engine” optimization, you might miss that the point of having a website probably is probably not achieved by a person searching on Google or Bing and finding your website.
Hurray! They found you! … Now what?
An SEO company owes it to their clients to focus, not on rankings, but on business success. Even Google drives this point, as mentioned by former Googler Maile Ohye
“A successful SEO also looks to improve the entire searcher experience, from search results to clicking on your website and potentially converting”
Not only does this make business sense, it’s absolutely critical from Google’s perspective. Think about it, Google is like a tour guide. If a tour guide keeps dropping the tourists off at destinations that bore them, that they can’t wait to leave, where they find nothing of interest that they’d like to take home, that tour guide will not get tips and eventually will lose customers.
Google has a vested interest in having people arrive at a website that they’ve “recommended” and say, “wow, this is just what I was searching for!”
When you become a client with Horizon Web Marketing, we view it an essential component of our program to analyze the type of website experience your customers will enjoy (or hate) when they land on your website. We’d like to offer some of the methods we use to understand and improve visitor experience on our clients’ websites.
3 Easy Ways to Understand Searcher Experience on Your Website
The best tool is still the easiest. Visit your own site and try to experience it through the eyes of someone who has never been there. This can be hard at first, but the longer and slower you browse, the more you can get a feel for that first-timer.
What good are friends if you don’t use them? Actually we’re talking about using them as unofficial testers. For example, if your site is an Ecommerce site, as a friend to buy one of your products (you might want to give them a substantial discount, say, 100%). Here’s the key, watch them do it. This is an occasionally painful, always useful experience.
Check your analytics. Google Analytics will show you on a page by page basis how long the average viewer will stay on a page (behavior > all pages > average time on page), how many of them leave without going deeper into your site ( > bounce rate).
Of course there are more sophisticated ways to measure searcher experience, but the priority remains the same, don’t get distracted chasing rankings or be satisfied when you’ve achieve them. As Maile Ohye said, “improve the entire searcher experience.”
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
https://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/children-593313_1920-1000x666.jpg6671000Ross Barefoothttps://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/horizon-web-marketing.pngRoss Barefoot2018-09-05 22:04:052018-10-04 17:04:42SEO is About More than Ranking High on Google
Measuring the success of SEO is a challenge, but it can’t be done if you’re looking at “vanity metrics” instead of numbers that matter to your business success. Read this to understand the difference between Key Performance Indicators and Vanity Performance Indicators and get ideas that will improve your marketing.
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
https://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/keyword-rankings-broken-mirror.jpg600900Ross Barefoothttps://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/horizon-web-marketing.pngRoss Barefoot2018-04-09 07:16:522018-04-13 02:30:22C-Suite SEO Tip #1: Target the Right Metrics
Kate: Can you imagine a life where everything was just easy? You know, like where you ask for things, and then people just bring them to you?
Jack: It’s wonderful…
– “The Family Man” (2000)
Ah yes, wouldn’t it be nice if you could read some sage bit of Search Engine Optimization or Digital Marketing advice, call in one of your well trained staff members, ask them to implement and simply wait for them to bring you the results?
Welcome to the Real World
Is SEO training just one more thing on your plate? Then only worry about the essentials!
I don’t know about you, but that ain’t the business world I operate in. I grew up in small business, literally, and I’ve spent the last 35+ years in a world where managing a business or a department tends to be like fighting 5 fires in a high wind with a garden hose and a shovel.
Taking time away from all the other concerns of a hectic day to become an expert in SEO simply isn’t an option for most small business managers. If you’re like me, you long for information that is stripped down to the essentials.
It’s to fill that need in SEO that we created a new online training course called “Real World SEO: Essentials.” This course is designed to cut through all the stuff that no one in the “real world” will ever do and focus on the meaningful concepts and the realistic actions most busy small businesses CAN take based on knowing those concepts.
The course is divided into 9 modules and is approximately 6 hours of video training.
Who is the Course For?
Business owners and managers
This course wasn’t just designed for business owners. It is designed for ANYONE who has to get their website seen while managing other business operations.
Independent web developers
It’s also a perfect class for Web developers who need to perform SEO for their clients but need to focus ONLY on the essentials that will have the best shot at results.
Marketing professionals
Finally, if you’re a marketing professional who is expected to manage, or simply know about, Search Engine Optimization, this course is a compact way to bring you up to speed on those concepts that will benefit your clients and put you ahead of most other marketing agencies who are after their SEO business.
Already know you want the full course? Sign up here and take $50 off (this introductory offer is only good through January 31st, 2017)
Try it Out for Free
We know how valuable your time is, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have been interested in the premise of this post. So instead of forcing you to commit to a purchase of the full 9 modules, we’re giving away the first 3 absolutely free. Once you sign up you’ll also get a downloadable free bonus: our SEO Workflow Journal, a template similar to what our agency uses for managing an SEO project.
The free sampler we’re giving away carries a double benefit: Not only will you have an idea of the value of the training before you purchase the full course, but regardless of whether you get the full course, you’ll get valuable and actionable insights.
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
https://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/is-seo-training-just-one-more-thing-on-your-plate.jpg428735Ross Barefoothttps://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/horizon-web-marketing.pngRoss Barefoot2016-12-23 19:38:502019-07-08 12:08:13Looking for Some Real World SEO Training?
Or maybe two? One thing that’s in ever shorter supply is time. We deal with dozens of business people. Managers, owners, marketing execs, even office workers and customer service reps. No one has extra time.
But here’s the challenge in digital marketing: it depends on knowledge. Make a mistake and the market will punish you. Make a different kind of mistake and your competitors will punish you. Make an even different kind of mistake and Google will punish you.
At Horizon Web Marketing our practice is built on SEO and related forms of digital media. We know firsthand how frustrating it is for business people to know even what “SEO” is (other than to search on the acronym and find out it means “Search Engine Optimization”), much less to make use of it to promote their websites.
And so, we decided to try for an achievable educational goal for our clients: a series of videos that we have dubbed “2-Minute SEO.” The videos are stripped to the bone to help non-SEO-professionals to understand what they need to know about SEO.
Our first set of 10 videos examines 10 of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) that we get about SEO. In future videos we will examine not only the “frequently” asked questions, but the “should” ask questions that will make you empowered in buying and managing your digital marketing efforts.
Sign up for our e newsletter to stay in touch with new releases. Our goal is to release 1 new video every week. Since we also do SEO training, our videos are designed to instruct, not to give you a sales pitch. So sit back and enjoy that SEO ride.
To see our current selection of 2-minute SEO videos: click here.
Ross Barefoot got his start in small business managing an importing company in the bicycle industry. While there, he tried his hand at programming to find more effective ways to track, market and sell his company’s range of bicycle parts. He loved the web marketing side of things so much he became a professional web developer in 2001, starting a website design business in Western Colorado. He took his first SEO certification course from the Search Engine Academy in 2002, followed it up with another in 2004, and decided to jump full time into SEO training and consulting in 2011, becoming a Master Certified Instructor with the Search Engine Academy, where he continues to serve on the Board of Directors. Today, Ross is CTO, trainer and chief SEO strategist at Horizon Web Marketing (www.horizonwebmarketing.com), a full-service digital marketing agency based in Las Vegas.
https://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/stop-watch-1135669_960_720.png720547Ross Barefoothttps://www.horizonwebmarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/horizon-web-marketing.pngRoss Barefoot2016-03-17 07:46:012016-03-17 18:08:332-Minute SEO: A New Video Series from Horizon Web Marketing
Hey, got a minute?
